Originally Posted by Qogrynt

I've owned a prior version of this book, so I know that you do good work. I have to tell you, however, that the Chapter 2 examples in the 2012 edition could understandably really put off a beginning programmer. If this was the first version of the book I had seen, I'm not sure I would have made it past this chapter, as it doesn't leave a good impression. I wasn't aware of any Amazon difficulties, but I did have some serious problems with both examples in Chapter 2. Rather than publicly post something on an ecommerce site like your unbalanced 'reviewer' did, I'd rather try to have a dialog that could help folks with similar problems, as your proposed explanation still doesn't straighten out the issues that I see with the two examples. So, I'll provide my own experience in as detailed a manner as possible.

Try It Out Exercise: Pages 32-36





This wasn't too bad, just somewhat confusing, mostly because of steps 5 & 6. You ask the reader to create a new project in step 1, select Windows Empty Project in step 2, name the project in step 3, and uncheck the create directory for solution option in step 4. All is well so far.

In step 5, you first instruct the reader to add a Windows form to the project via the Project => Add Windows Form menu selection. You ask the reader to name the form frmMain.cs.

Next, however, you ask the reader to type their program name into the Name textbox, etc. This instruction belongs back on step 3, not step 5. This causes confusion.

Step 6 seems to be a continuation of what you were trying to do at the start of step 5 in adding a Windows form to the project. Again, this causes confusion to a beginning programmer.


Try It Out Exercise: Pages 44-49

This example, unless I'm really missing something, seems broken.

Step 1 is fine.

Step 2 is okay (adding the System Assemblies) until later.

Step 3 is where things really go wrong for me. You instruct the Reader to add a Code File via the Project => Add New Item menu sequence and to name the Code File frmMain.cs.

You then explain (correctly) that there is now a frmMain.cs source window. You also explain (incorrectly) that there is also a frmMain.cs [Design] window as well. No matter how I execute this, the [Design] window never shows. Why would it? You instructed the reader to add a Code File, not a Form Object, so no Design tab will appear. Am I missing something here? Could a difference between the VS beta version that you worked with and the production version be causing this? I've had programming folks that use VS daily try to get a [Design] tab to appear here - to no avail. This appears to be the central problem with this example - the appearance of a [Design] tab upon the creation of the frmMain.cs Code File. I've had multiple people try this sequence, and it does not appear. Your response below says it does. Is there an option or variable within VS that could account for the difference in experience?

I have a sneaking suspicion that Step 3 should have instructed the reader to add a Windows Form object rather than a Code File (or, possibly, the reader should have been directed to create a Windows Forms project rather than an Empty Project in Step 1), but even that doesn't make 100% sense. If the intent was actually to add a Windows Form object in Step 3, then Step 2 is completely unnecessary, as the appropriate assemblies are automatically added by Visual Studio when you add the form. There is no need to add them manually as instructed in Step 2.

Later in Step 3, you instruct the reader to double-click the empty form and to notice that a 'new tab frmMain.cs' has been created. First, there is no Windows Form to double-click, and second, you've already instructed the reader to create a Code File with the name frmMain.cs in Step 3 - why would we need another one by double-clicking a form object (that isn't there)?

The rest of the steps seem to be okay.


From a complete beginning programmer's perspective, the first 2 exercises in the book do not leave a great impression for what the rest of the book may hold.

The first exercise has instructions that are out of order and cause confusion.

The second exercise, in my opinion, just doesn't work. The reader is stuck looking for a [Designer] tab that just doesn't exist and really has no way to understand the way forward.

I hope this makes sense from a beginning programmer's perspective in working through your examples. The rest of them are solid. These two have issues, in my opinion. Unfortunately, they couldn't be placed in a more important position (at the beginning of a beginner's programming text).

I'd be happy to clarify anything that may be vague. Again, I really enjoy your teaching approach and want to help clarify the issues that some readers may be having.